


So Darkness I Became

by lizimajig



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bad Men and the Women Who Love Them, F/M, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-29
Updated: 2012-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:38:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/pseuds/lizimajig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The stars, the moon / They have all been blown out / You left me in the dark.</i><br/>Sigyn arrives on Earth like a queen should. Her dress is the color of the night sky, her bright, pale hair like the tail of a comet, decorated with stones that twinkle and shine like a constellation. But she is more brilliant than the brightest star in the sky, his wife, his heart's companion -- the only one Loki Laufeyson would ever worship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Darkness I Became

**Author's Note:**

> An AU prompt from river_soul on an Avengers commentfic post on LJ: Loki wins and brings his fair bride to see the world he's won.
> 
> My apologies for fucking with timelines, if that is indeed what I am doing -- but the Marvel Movieverse is enough of a canon in and of itself that I don't feel too awful taking what I want from comics/mythology and leaving the rest. I'm sorry if this impedes anyone from enjoying the story, but I wanted to write something compelling above everything else. ♥ So enjoy anyway.

Sigyn arrives on Earth like a queen should. Her dress is the color of the night sky, her bright, pale hair like the tail of a comet, decorated with stones that twinkle and shine like a constellation. But she is more brilliant than the brightest star in the sky, his wife, his heart's companion -- the only one Loki Laufeyson would ever worship.

She smiles when she lays eyes on him, and he knows that she has missed him as much as he has missed her. He bends and presses her hands to his mouth, kissing gently. With her, here, he can be happy. "My love," he greets her fervently, and he straightens, taking in the sight of her. "My queen."

The smile leaves her eyes, only for a second, but long enough that he sees it. "Husband," she greets him, the way a thirsty man greets water. Another split second and she reclaims her hands, so she may touch his face as she kisses him on the mouth.

" _Sigyn._ " Her name leaves his mouth like a prayer as it hits him -- hard -- how much he has missed his wife. She stares back, with the only love he would let himself believe. "Welcome."

His queen will have everything

\---

The Chitauri made a good army, but as it turned out, not good neighbors.

"You heard them," Loki seeths from one end of their expansive chamber to the other. "They speak as though I were their vassal and not a king," he continues, throwing himself into a chair in a fit of pique. 

She's at his back, her fingers begin to thread through his hair, soothing without words. For anyone else it would be at their peril to make such a familiar gesture. "I heard them," she acknowledges, her gentle fingers working from scalp to ends, one hand at a time. "I can't say that I like them."

He chortles, unsurprised. "Nobody likes them," he remarks caustically. "I fulfilled my part of the bargain and they theirs, and then we part. Why is this not simple?"

"You were an advantageous gamble," she tells him. "They think it would be to their benefit to make you their ally."

"Make me their _servant,_ " he snarls. "I am king, Sigyn."

"And they helped make you thus. Without their army or their weapons, could you have made Midgard yours?" 

It strikes him that this is how she spoke to their boys, once: calmly, rationally. Everything about her, the gentle touch of her hands on his head, her voice, is for boys who had bruised their egos at play. A mother's touch and voice. He isn't sure he likes it. He impetuously tears himself from the chair and away from her hands. 

When he glances back, the look is the same as well. If he has wounded her, she shows it not. He expects that he has, though he knows she will never show it. "I do not wish to treat with them further. That will be the end of it."

"You may not wish to treat with them," she says, her soft edges suddenly gone, "but they wish to treat with you. What will they do if you refuse them? Who supports your decision?"

As usual she sees the heart of the matter. "I lack an army," he acknowledges.

"You lack your subjects' loyalty," she answers.

He doesn't hear.

\---

The humans are proving to be most intransigent. Loki watches Midgard burn.

Putting them in thrall as he did when he first came to earth had proven useful, for a time, but the magic seems to prove weaker as you spread it to more and more of them. Or perhaps the Chitauri have reduced the efficacy of the weapon they had gifted him. 

"You must stop this," Sigyn begs, and he stops walking away.

"Rebellion must be strangled in its cradle, my lady," he answers, his voice razor sharp but unable to cut through her steely resolve.

"And so you strangle babes in their cradles, and their mothers and fathers for fighting to save them?" she demands, eyes flashing like meteorites. "This is not how to gain their love."

"What need have I of love?" he sneers.

He sees that the unthinking remark has hit home. "You have a greater need than you know," she says evenly with a chiding note. 

As usual, she returns as good as she gets. It makes him smile, more than a bit wolfishly. "Is that so?" he replies. "And are you suggesting that this would win me their love?" He spits the word out as though it tastes foul, and perhaps it does -- he has no use for it, save for hers, which is frustratingly constant and steady. 

"I am suggesting that it would not hurt," she replies, her hands small and warm on his cheeks.

He despises how he feels so unworthy beside her.

"Then let it be so," he says.

She kisses him, long and hard.

\---

Not long after he makes it, Loki begins to think he has made a grave mistake.

Ceasing to raze the earth from on end to the other has not earned him their love, but earned it for Sigyn. They love his queen, call her Merciful and Good. She is all these things, but it does not help him. He is driven to ever more desperate measures to keep his crown, and she grows melancholy.

He's not sure which troubles him more.

Stark's words ring in his head. _If we can't protect Earth, you can be damned well sure we'll avenge it._ His failure is starting to press in on him from both sides as he cannot hold ground by himself. The humans and his brother have promised to come back and retake the planet, while the Chitauri -- they had made their threats already, and he had no more desire to be the subject of what tortures they could devise than he did the first time.

As Sigyn grows unhappy, she grows heavy and cold. The airy light that normally radiates from her everything dulls, and she is distracted. He had hoped to give her more sons, and daughters, to fill her lonely heart, and rule after him -- not to replace the ones they'd lost, he is not foolish enough to think you can ever do such a thing for a mother -- but to ease the ache he shares.

It is not to be. As she drifts further, Loki withdraws as well and begins to imagine. Or does he? She no longer speaks, but there are long, significant looks when she thinks he cannot see.

Maybe he sleeps next to his true demise each night. His hand wanders across her nearly bare shoulder as she sleeps, and his fingertips touch the column of her throat. How close he comes to squeezing the breath from her until she will confess whatever it is she keeps from him (or he imagines that she has) haunts him.

He finds her in her garden, the last beautiful place for thousands of leagues, green and flourishing, a deal warmer than they're used to, but Sigyn has taken to it as though she were born to it. "Unhappy lady," he addresses her, although it is in part an observation. He has not seen her smile since he knows not when.

She does look back at him, however. "Unhappy lady to an unhappy lord," she says.

"What makes you say so," he replies.

"Because you show your worry on your face." Her own tone is frosty, she may well freeze the roses climbing the wall in front of her. 

"You think I should not worry?" he asks caustically. 

"I think you do well to worry," she answers her tone showing levity that the rest of her does not. "But not where others may see it."

"You speak in circles, my lady; I find it rather tiresome."

"Do you, now." The remark mocks him, as does the smirk he glimpses on her lips. Only the faintest hint of surprise shows when his fingers grip her neck, not squeezing, not choking -- but firmly holding her there in front of him.

"What do you think, lady, that I have done all this for your amusement? That I become the jester in my own rule?" Her heartbeat is steady under his fingers; it hasn't sped up one bit. She is not scared of him, she trusts him, even at this proximity, so completely and literally in his hands. "I think even you work against me, is that it? _Do you betray me, Sigyn?_ "

For a moment, she seems as though she is not even going to deign to respond to the accusation. "If I ever do such a thing, husband, you may rest in the security that I did so because of the two of us, it is I who loves you enough to set you right."

In those words, she hits all his fears. Stunned, he drops his hand from her neck and backs away as though he'd been burned. "You presume much."

"And you see little," she retorts. "You are caught between a rock and a stone. Continuing is madness -- you have _nothing_ to prove!"

"I have everything to prove!" he cries. "If there are those who will call me monster, then let me be guilty as I stand accused!"

"This is not how the matter stands," she argues, "and you know this quite well. If anyone were to 'accuse' you, as you say, they would answer to Thor, certainly -- "

"Do not speak his name!"

"Why not? Lest I remind you of the love he bears for you still?" she demands. "Because against all logic, he does. I do." 

Her fingers graze his cheek, and suddenly he knows what the Chitauri meant by making him wish for something as sweet as pain. He wishes for it now, he deserves no such touch, and he recoils as though her fingers were knives, ready to cut him bloody. "Betray me as you have said you may, and we will see how much love you will bear me then." He turns it into as much of a threat as he can, so unnerved.

Sigyn's return gaze is sad. "Will you never tire of trying to prove yourself unworthy of it?"

He supposes he never will. He leaves her there.

\---

The Avengers come for him first. All in all, it is perhaps preferable. 

As he predicted, Sigyn had her part to play. He knows. She says nothing, but he sees it when she looks at him, unbearably sad and guilty. He wishes he could tell her she has nothing to be sad or guilty over. He is Loki Silvertongue, lies are his coin, nothing good comes from him, whereas if any bad could ever originate in his wife, he never did see it. 

He marvels at her loyalty which he has done nothing to earn, still, after all this time she is steadfast and remains with him. When Barton, the one they call Hawkeye, pins him with a gaze as sharp as the raptor he's named for, she stands between them, silent and firm as a stone. The message is clear: that anyone who wants to touch him will have to go through her.

He doesn't blame anyone who passes on by. Sigyn is steel cloaked in velvet.

They will return to Asgard, although earth fights to keep him there. Of course they do, they wish to see him punished in all manner of creative ways; he killed their fathers, sons, mothers, daughters -- they want him to know that pain one hundred times over.

He is shackled, weighed to the ground so heavy he wonders how he will ever travel upward again, every bit as heavy as he sees Sigyn's heart has become. He is muzzled, so he may trick no more people. He may not escape; neither may he eat, speak, nor kiss his wife. 

She speaks enough for both of them. "We will be home," she says, kissing his hair and his troubled forehead. "All will be well, my love. All will be well."


End file.
